Labour's foreign policy

Beyond the water's edge

Douglas Alexander is shaping the opposition’s take on the world

VOTERS tend to rank foreign affairs well down their list of concerns, so it is tempting for opposition parties to neglect the issue. The uprisings in the Arab world have illustrated the folly of doing so. In responding to the upheaval, David Cameron has been caught between commercial realpolitik and an intermittent zeal for toppling dictators—the confused result, say some, of a lack of serious thinking about the world when he was leader of the opposition.

The current Labour opposition's approach to international affairs will be defined largely by Douglas Alexander, who was appointed shadow foreign secretary by the party's leader, Ed Miliband, in January. His predecessor, Yvette Cooper, rarely seemed enthused by the portfolio. Mr Alexander, by contrast, is a former international development secretary and Foreign Office minister.

He distinguishes his evolving foreign policy from the government's in two main ways. First, he places less emphasis on advancing British commercial interests abroad. He regards promoting exports as important, to be sure, but sees it as less central to statecraft than does William Hague, the Conservative foreign secretary.

The other big difference is that Mr Alexander does not share the government's faith in bilateralism. Mr Hague accuses the previous Labour administration of neglecting the basic diplomatic work of building relationships with other countries. For him, “all foreign relations are bilateral.” He has dispatched ministers on visits to places such as Angola and the Philippines. Mr Cameron's recent tour of the Middle East, conducted as the local revolts were developing, was partly aimed at reviving Britain's old alliances with Kuwait and other countries in the Gulf. Mr Alexander says all this has become a substitute for fully fledged engagement with multilateral bodies, such as the European Union, where he thinks the real power lies.

Labour is perhaps less divided by foreign policy than at any time since the second world war. The epic struggles between the party's pro-NATO, pro-European right and its pacifist, Eurosceptic left peaked in the 1980s. The rancour left behind by Tony Blair's military interventions, especially in Iraq, is slowly fading. Veterans lament the paucity of foreign-affairs discussions in the modern Labour Party—but that means Mr Alexander has the freedom to design a policy without provoking a schism.

Mr Alexander is emerging as one of the more interesting politicians in the shadow cabinet. He is perhaps the closest thing to a Blairite at the heart of Mr Miliband's operation. He used to work for Gordon Brown, whose Church of Scotland upbringing he shares, but always seemed more comfortable with the centrism of New Labour than more tribal Brownites did. His quiet, circumspect personality was not a natural fit in that laddish political clique, either. He brings a sharp mind and considerable experience to the foreign-affairs brief. But if Labour is to avoid drifting leftwards on fiscal policy, public-service reform and the other issues that really shift votes, it will need his input on domestic matters too.